I cant believe this. How can one "love" Chennai ? Cynics will ask..what the hell is "love" and then how can one fall in love with this city. You can fall in love with alcohol, good food, dogs, cats, parrots, women [in that order ;-)] but hello..Chennai. Are you sick ? Would you like to see doctor ?
I belonged to those overwhelming number of cynics till about a couple of years back. Never ever in my life I had even nightmares of having any amorous relation ship with this city. It was known as Madras then , and as any other non- southie Indian, South India was all about Madras.It started and ended there.
Fat dark men wearing lungi & chappals
Fatter darkest women with stinking flowers on their hair
Vegeterian food cooked in coconut oil and tamarind everywhere
Dust, red chillies,water shortage
Anything you can imagine..as bad a city could be
You name it and Madras had it.
But as it happens there are somethings which you never want to happen to you and still they happen. Chennai was one such thing. I landed up with two suitcases and my dad.
Initially every single thing about the place was an irritant…For one, there was the auto-mafia to content with, which I won’t get into. (That deserves a post in itself). But I remember some weird arguments I had with them, I had asked them stuff like, ‘Are'nt you ashamed of the bad name you bring to Chennai? Do you know how we all hate you? Does it not bother you at all?” To which the dude tells me, ‘No!” Since, then I have let them be…
Then there was a 12 month-summer to content with, thrown in with remarkably high levels of humidity, that makes you look gives you are straight out of a Yash Chopra soaked-in-rain look (except that here you don’t even have the sensual experience of the feel of cool water on your skin).
Then there were the people. They all seemed to be so wrong. To add to it, stingy & hypocritical.
So, I was an unhappy young man and spent much of my time cribbing and whining to anyone who was willing to listen and very often not willing to listen! :) Now, cribbing is quite a skill, and to achieve maximum gratification, one must crib to someone who will completely miss/disagree with your point. There is really no fun in cribbing to a kindsoul because, then the cribbing only gets both of you depressed and makes you crave for some alcohol (or whatever else is your poison).
So, I began to hunt for the Champions of Chennaiwasi’s( the real tambis) and pour out my sorrows and the like. This would get them all really upset and I have had many a heated argument on the, ‘Joys of being a Chennai person’.
But anyway that was then…Since then, something’s have changed hands… money, hearts, emotions, et al. Also, in this constancy of all changes have seen me develop ‘finer’ feelings for the city. Here I am, suddenly becoming ‘one of them’. I have begun to develop ‘affection’ for the place and get into ‘gloat mode’ all the time (in much the same manner as parents gloat to the world at large about how wonderfully talented and bright their bachas are, very often when they are not!).
Also, if irrational hatred eventually morphs into love, then the said love also becomes irrational. (What did I just say?? Some will say John Major type...). So, here I am becoming the Champion of Chennai people, defending the mafia auto even!
Now, while Chennai is not definitely the newest (apologies for the poor grammar) face of cosmopolitan India, but there are a whole lot of Non-Tamilians who do live in the place. Or at least I have enough and more friends, colleagues, and other assorted people from other parts of the country enjoying the sights and economy of my city. Its not a happening( whatever the word means) city but then it does not stop from you doing anything. You are not allowed to be indisciplined but you can enjoy responsibly.
Without exception, all of these Non-Tamilians (particularly the ones from North India) will crib till no end about the woes of the city.
“Arey what happens here anyway?” (Meant to be a smart rhetoric one, the argument to end all arguments)
“How can you invite your friend from Bangalore to Chennai that is criminal?” (Meant to exalt the superior pub culture that Bangalore offers, never mind that said friend doesn’t drink!)
“Where does one find good non vegetarian food in Chennai, who wants to eat this suspect southie chicken something? Am sure it has coconut oil!”(Here restaurants do NOT use coconut oil, and have you been to Kabab Factory or Lotus Pond or Mainland China or Tangerine or Cornucopia ? If not shut up)
“It is so hot boss, this is not weather fit for human survival.” (Right! How about going to the cool climes of Rajasthan, exactly what the doctor recommends in the month of May!)
“Somebody must nuke these auto guys” (Sure thing! Though there are enough and more worthier souls to be nuked first… How about we start with certain members of the Indian cricket team…)
“Why doesn’t anything ever happen here?” (Variation of statement 1)
“Your Amma na…” (And we are not talking about my mom here!) (Yes, yes she is wicked lady, in fact she is sole cause of all political turmoil across the nation… Bihar for instance. Shall we nuke her too?)
“They can’t even speak Hindi…” (Aww, how cruel. Can you speak Tamil ?)
“I have lost 5 kg of weight in the last 5 months…”(And that is a problem ??? Since when?)
“The chicks are no good yaar, they all suck"..(Agree they are not the cool, hot types . But dude tell you even if you did meet the aspired for ‘posh’ chick, what do you intend to do? And do you think that there is a remote possibility even that the said chick will be interested in you?!)
And basically crib along similar lines…
Naturally, this gets just a trifle tedious after a while… And it makes me respond in a manner that will do Bal Thackerey proud. I tell the concerned Chennai haters to go back to Kalahandi, Cherapunji, POK, or wherever else they came from and not deplete the resources of this city. Surely, you can’t make cribbing a 24*7 operation??!! I am of course appalled at such statements that I seem to make(the drastic speed with which I am able to mouth the devil’s thoughts than the more rationalized, much slower nicer person somewhere inside of me is worrying). Of course, this lack of understanding of the human anatomy (foot does not go inside mouth) is my license to say silly things. And while I don’t mean to say such things, but what to do? If I have something to say, then I ought to, right? Not like anyone else will say it for me!
All of this gets me onto a firmly self-referential mode. Now all of my life, I have lived,studies in cities/towns, which were not my cities, and I have never cribbed about weather, people, food, language, local politicians, wildlife, sights, sounds, etc.
And it is not like…
I am one of the contestants from a beauty pageant, ‘Oh, life is so beautiful, lemme soak in the myriad cultural experiences to make me a whole being’ (ooh ooh, world peace around the corner)
Neither am I a, ‘Thoda hai, thode ki zaroorat hai" type soul
Nor am I am one of those wonderfully, non-judgmental, without an opinion on things person
Or a person who is complacent enough to settle for anything
In fact, I am a far cry from being any of these (and no, its not like I am proud about that or something!). Yet, I have done okay and made myself at ‘home’ in all of these places where economic, human, emotional and social indicators might have been abysmally low.
Of course, all of this irrationality that is there, viz. (Too much dislike for a place, which is much nicer than ‘your’ home; Too much love for a place that you ‘know’ is flawed just because it’s your home…) is perhaps best left unexplained… After all, using my left-brain to explain the perceptions held by my right brain isn’t terribly easy is it?
Also City A, Town B, and Village C… really doesn’t make too much of difference, does it?
At the end of the day as cliché goes, “Home is ‘someone’ you come back to everyday”
Oops..again senti. Need to see a psychiatrist.
